With the advent of computers, interactive electronic communications, and the Internet, as well as advances in the digital realm of consumer information, has come a reinvention of conventional entertainment and communication services to enhance programming, recording, and viewing of multimedia, such as broadcast television programs. It is not uncommon for consumers to have access to hundreds, if not thousands, of media programs from a multitude of sources such as broadcast television, on-demand programming, and other third party content providers available through the Internet. In addition, consumers are provided with great flexibility in the times they actually will view the content, as made possible with digital video recorder (DVR) technology, for instance. Such volume of programming can place a tremendous strain on network resources, namely bandwidth. Moreover, the flexibility in viewing times poses an additional challenge to properly designing network capacity for the traffic loads and patterns. Traditionally, the infrastructure for content delivery, particularly broadcast content, has been largely engineered using predetermined, static bandwidth. However, this static approach can result in wasted capacity, if, for example, the demand for the programs has been overestimated. Conversely, if there is insufficient capacity, the service provider will not be able to satisfy the demand for certain content, and thus, can potentially suffer the lost of revenue.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach for efficiently coordinating the allocation of bandwidth for recording of content.